[sudont]

You'll enjoy this paper by the Harvard Business School which pretty much destroys the concept of systemic goal setting in a business. It describes your exact situation: when people have to deal with shit goals, they figure out how work the system.

http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-083.pdf

Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7897662

[saryant]

It's like the Office Space version of arbitrage. Where the rules lead to unintended opportunity, there's space for exploitation.

(See also: frequent flyer programs)